Jean de Fodoas

by Maurice Magre

  Presents of a particular kind! For the men of the Occident—those of base extraction, at least—exploited the attraction exerted by the women of their country, women with white skin. They ordinarily brought the most degraded, the daughters of Seville—but it seemed unimaginable that the Viceroy of Goa could have recourse to such a base means!

  Now, that day, the hashish and the alcohol were acting with more force on my brain. They had given me a strange activity that succeeded a period whose duration I cannot evaluate, doubtless several days, which had passed in alternatives of sleep and divagation. Perhaps because of that, Aboul Fazi had decided not to pay any more heed to me.

  The noble inhabitant of Ahmednagar was about to retire, with genuflections, when he thought it appropriate to add a further detail to what he had said. The powerful Yacoub, the lord of a city in Khandesh—a man, in truth, always tempted by desire—had found beauty in the woman, or one of the women, in the Portuguese house—he did not know whether there was one or several—and had linked himself with Lord de Barbosa. He went there often. Oh, if one knew that Yacoub! It was necessary to feel sorry for anyone that he succeeded in taking to his city, even in the capacity of his first wife.

  The name of Yacoub made me remember the scorn that he had shown me, and everything in my head spun: the rose-bush, the Chinese physician, Inès de Saldanna and the mad idea that that exceptional creature might be close by and might need my help. Mourad’s necklace suddenly weighed heavily upon my head. But events became precipitate and did not leave me time to regret the days that I had just wasted.

  Forgetting my quality as the Emperor’s son and Subadar, before Omar Ali, who was scarcely surprised, so accustomed was he to the singularities of the real Mourad, I had accompanied the man who had just given me that information through the halls. Omar Ali was about to open the last door. I then made an abrupt gesture, doubtless to extend my hand in accordance with the custom of my own land, to the man I wanted to thank. But, by the fault of the hashish, I miscalculated the distance that separated me from him. I thought he was distant and he was close by. My gesture shoved him.

  He tried to lean on the handle of the door, which opened. He fell to the ground in the midst of the guards who were standing at the top of the stairs. He uttered a cry disproportionate to what had happened to him. The guards thought it was an aggression on his part from which I had just defended myself. They threw him down the stairs brutally, and if Omar Ali had not run forward to intervene, one of them, the most zealous, descending the steps behind him, would have pierced him with his spear.

  Now, at the bottom of the stairs, behind another guard of Mongol soldiers, there was a crowd of people—noblemen, delegates of merchants, solicitors of every sort—some desirous of assuring Aboul Fazi of their fidelity, others animated by evil designs coming in search of a pretext to manifest them.

  The inhabitant of Ahmednagar who had come to inform me, and whom I had recompensed so poorly, went down groaning and was lost in the crowd, but a buzzing circle formed round him. I was on the threshold and I perceived the accents of a voice expressing itself in Portuguese.

  I saw a man of tall stature with a graying beard and a plume of several colors in his hat, dressed in the Occidental style, who was waving long arms in front of a functionary with hooded eyes and folded arms. The latter was listening impassively, and his attitude showed that he did not understand. The individual was speaking very loudly; he was almost giving orders. It could only be the Marquis de Barbosa.

  And it seemed to me—I was almost certain without being able to certify it to myself, for all sorts of people were incessantly pressing—that, standing beside the Marquis de Barbosa was Francisco Manoël, in an ostentatious costume. Although I could hardly see him, I had the impression that he had the attitude of someone who would like to see a situation that he was responsible for calming down become envenomed.

  I took a step forward and I shouted in a resounding voice to Barbosa that it was not becoming to talk so loudly but that, in any case, I would see him immediately.

  The retreat in which I had been living for some time and the sight of so many men gathered together, combined with the poisons I had absorbed, suddenly gave me a state of mind of benevolent and almost affectionate disposition. I advanced as far as the first steps of the stairway and I shouted that all those who had a request to make, that all the inhabitants of Ahmednagar who wanted to address themselves to the son of the Emperor Akbar, had only to advance and climb the stairs.

  Scarcely had I pronounced those words that I was conscious that I had just done so in French, a language that was not known to anyone!

  Perhaps I was in the same place where Mourad’s ivory cane had broken and where his fall had taken place. I saw Omar Ali launch himself in front of me, his arms outspread, as if to prevent me from falling.

  I felt so favorably disposed toward all humankind that if Barbosa, beneath his plume, had climbed the stairs, I would have hugged him in my arms. I made a sign to the crowd to come toward me, and I was ready to make use of my power to grant all wishes. But it is written that love is always poorly recompensed.

  Darting a circular glance over the stone galleries I suddenly saw Aboul Fazi surge forth from a lateral door, as well as Khan Khanan, enveloped in his fur. Both of them pointed me out with their fingers to a troop of armed men, who stated marching rapidly in my direction. The genius of security that inhabits my soul with an eternally attentive eye informed me in a second that those men had received orders to seize my person without delay.

  At the same time as that notion of imminent captivity replaced the mild benevolence for all humankind that I had just experienced, I felt close to my right ear the wing of a bat. It had gone past me with surprising speed, surpassing the possibilities of a bird through the air. I turned round and I saw a large arrow fix itself, whistling, in the woodwork behind me. At the same time, a savage clamor burst forth from the crowd at my feet.

  The forgetfulness I which I lived had prevented me from knowing that the revolt had became increasingly imminent as the news had spread that an imperial army led by Akbar himself was advancing at a forced march toward Ahmednagar. I was to learn little later that the enclosing walls of the fortress and the reception rooms of the ground floor were full, that day, of a crowd of people more numerous than usual, who were hiding weapons beneath their garments and were supposed, at nightfall, to massacre Aboul Fazi and the partisans of Akbar. The incident of the man I had shoved involuntarily had only precipitated events.

  I saw the stupefied Marquis de Barbosa borne away by a human whirlpool on which his plume as floating like a boat with multicolored sails. But the wing of the first arrow had sobered me up. I launched myself backwards. In a matter of seconds I tore off the mantle in which I was enveloped, the brocade coat and the white belt, and threw away the green turban with the necklace of turquoises, all the ornaments of my ephemeral royalty. I seized my sword, pulled it from my scabbard, and was possessed by the joy of being merely a man holding a weapon, who is about to do battle.

  I don’t know whether the men who had the mission of arresting me recognized me, but they followed me and obeyed my voice. Through the clamors, the gunshots and the disorder, I understood that the essential thing was to throw out of the doors all the inhabitants of Ahmednagar who had penetrated the fortress. I discovered subsequently—for I have not retained a very precise memory of what happened—that it was thanks to a sort of frenetic genius deployed by me that we were able to arrive at that result.

  The revolt was two hours in advance, and a trumpeter was supposed to summon armed men who were stationed in the houses near the fortress. Hazard caused me to notice the signaler in question. His instrument resembled a horn of plenty and he was climbing a watch-tower that was backed up against the main gate. I launched myself toward him. The watchman had been killed. I nearly tripped over his body. Having almost reached the platform, I found myself facing a man who had one knee on the ground and was raising some kind of r
ifle-cannon that I had never seen before. They are redoubtable weapons that fire a packet of grapeshot, and which are only manufactured in Kabul.

  The man, who was there to protect the trumpeter, had a broad smile on his face, doubtless because of the surprise that he was about to cause me by a sudden death. I advanced boldly. The shot did not depart, and it was him who was stupefied to receive a great blow from my sword on his head. I snatched the trumpet away at the moment when it was about to resound, but I had a scruple about putting to death a man who was perhaps only a musician, and with a shove I caused him to fall off the tower.

  It was around the gate that the principal combat unfolded. Someone shouted: “There’s a cannon in the square!” A steep road extended from that Gate to the Meidan-Chah, or Royal Square, surrounded by low houses with arched arcades, in front of which there was a market. The rebels had amassed an enormous quantity of vegetables there, from which a cannon, transported the previous night, had just emerged unexpectedly.

  I heard Khan Khanan cry out beside me for someone to bring him a horse. The powder of gunfire formed a dark cloud around us. In that mist a few cavaliers surged forth, in whom I recognized the Mongols who had left Agra with Aboul Fazi and me. One of them dismounted in order to give his horse to the Khan. With one bound, I was in the saddle.

  “I’ll take charge of the cannon,” I said to the Khan. And I made a sign to the cavaliers to follow m, if they could. I perceived hesitation in their faces because, although we could leave the enclosure, the difficulty would be getting back in. I launched myself forward, striving to scatter the crowd. There were whistling sounds in my ears but I knew that it was only a matter of bats.

  It was not until I had arrived in the middle of the square that I perceived that seven or eight horsemen were around me. With their long spears, those Mongols carried out an extraordinary massacre of all the men surrounding the canon. I was obliged to stop them. More than me, they had lost their reason. A principle of security that never quit me reminded me internally that if it were possible to close the gate, they would do so without any concern for us.

  I succeeded in rallying the furious men. One fell face forward with an arrow between the eyes. Two others, seized by the foot, disappeared into the crowd as if into a sea. I have no idea how we were able to reach the gate just as they were about to close it.

  Being in battle is nothing, but it is necessary not to reflect after a battle. It is necessary not to hear the groans and the cries of those who are being finished off. For me, that day, an absolutely new event of an interior order occurred. No one was fighting any longer, but the Mongols pierced with their spears all those who had taken up arms. I had blood on my face and on my hands, and I was sickened by its insipid odor. I had just sat down on the steps that descended toward a waterless pool situated between the first and second enclosures.

  A large insect with a damaged wing landed on my foot and I was about to crush it when I was retained by the thought that it would be a pity to destroy that delicately organized and colored work of nature. I touched the unknown insect and I put a little blood on its spindly body.

  I felt a sharp regret. I would have liked to wash it. It seemed to me that I had soiled an object of a divine order, superior to me. Then the cries that I heard became strangely heart-rending. I looked at my sword with its blue-tinted blade as one looks at a snake with poisoned fangs.

  What! I said to myself. I’ve just killed those men, who were savant organizations of the Creator, and I’m suffering for having put a drop of blood on the light body of that insect! That little stain must have made me understand how much I had soiled myself.

  I heard footsteps beside me and I got up precipitately on recognizing Aboul Fazi. He considered me with severity, but with the acuity that comprehension gives. The light of reason had returned to me and I made the gesture of falling at his knees, but he stopped me.

  “It’s the Emperor who will judge you if we see him arrive. I’ll leave you the means of showing between now and then that you are his faithful servant, and who knows? It is always permissible to hope, even if one has merited death by one’s folly.”

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE ROSE

  The three breaches in the fortress made a year before by Khan Khanan’s mines had only been repaired imperfectly. It was there that the battles took place. As I had no title in the imperial army, no fixed post had been assigned to me in the defense, with the result that I was everywhere on occasion. The Khan did not trust me. I was seen with a jaundiced eye by almost everyone because of my quality as a foreigner and I only owed it to my striking actions of the first evening that I was not shackled by an iron chain in the depths of some subterranean prison where a few enemies of the Khan fought with the rats and the darkness.

  Mourad’s death had been officially announced. There was no exhibition of the body because of the state of siege and the imminent danger in which we found ourselves. Naturally, the comedy I had played so badly, and in which I had magnified my role immeasurably, had not been able to remain secret, but those who knew about it said nothing. I was grateful for the consideration that they showed me—consideration mingled with an affectionate interest because they judged me summoned to a very rapid death that would be of an inexplicable character. They did not know that a favorable star shone for me and that a strange curve of destiny was traced in the book of human beings on the page concerning me.

  I did not know that either, but doubtless I had received an interior notification of it by an invisible message. It was the receiving of that message, I now believe, that had caused the insensate courage of which I gave proof. Those who brave death are, most of the time, those who have been informed, without their knowing it, that the death in question is still distant. Nevertheless, there are some who are mistaken, or have received bad information, since I have seen many courageous men die, as perfectly insouciant of danger as I was myself.

  Omar Ali was my companion. He retained a certain respect for me, although it was well-established in his mind that I was only a young foreigner without a fortune who had no other title than that of the Emperor’s favorite—a title now severely compromised. He was the same age as me and listened with admiration to everything I said. There was only one point on which he differed and showed, when we talked about it, a singularly bad character. He claimed that his sword of curved form, with a broad and heavy blade, was infinitely superior to my long and straight épée. Contradiction on that issue irritated him to the point of fury.

  He was a Muslim convert to Hinduism. Emperor Akbar favored that kind of conversion, but in spite of that there were very few, so great is fanaticism. That was in Omar Ali a sign of moral superiority. I had even remarked after a very short time the immense difference that separated the Hindus from the Muslims and, in addition, from believers in all other religions, including mine. In wanting to unify religion, Akbar, although he was a Muslim, wanted to make Hinduism dominant, because he considered it to be the most elevated of beliefs.

  One night, we were sitting on the round path of the ramparts, and Omar Ali was talking to me about his new faith with a mixture of naivety and ardor. We were guarding a demolished tower whose base plunged profoundly into a pool of stagnant water. The fortress, with its courtyards, its tables, its hangars, its troughs and its wells, was larger than the entire Saint-Sernin quarter of Toulouse, which contains an immense basilica and a no less immense monastery, with its cemetery and its dependences. Only one part of the troops was enclosed there. The others had been distributed to guard the ramparts of the city, and their fate as unknown. We hoped, without being sure, that they had been able to enclose themselves in the various towers erected beside the gates. The vastness of the enclosure was disproportionate to the number of its defenders and Omar Ali and I had the entire length of the pond under our responsibility.

  The city was full of rumors, for Akbar’ partisans and those of the old Queen were fighting in many places there. We saw a conflagration burst forth in the direction of
the east. I seized my companion’s arm and asked him whether it was not in that direction that he had encountered me, a few days before, when he had been sent to search for me.

  “The blaze seems to me to be exactly there,” he replied.

  And he added a few details that he had not yet given to me.

  The palace in front of which I had stopped had initially been occupied by Capuchins

  “They were as lugubriously clad as the Jesuits, they have the same religion and they pursued poor Hindus likewise, in order to convert them. They obtained no more results than one another and it’s difficult to understand why they hate one another. Capuchins were the first buyers of the house Afterwards they sold half of it to the Jesuits. Quarrels followed, and they increased in violence when the Marquis de Barbosa came to install himself in the Jesuit residence, with an entire caravan.”

  My companion scaled the highest part of the tower we were guarding and declared that he was almost sure, according to his knowledge of Ahmednagar, that it was the dwelling of the Portuguese that was burning.

  My resolutions are abrupt but difficult to extract from my brain. I was determined to go and see. At the place where we were standing there was a rudimentary stairway carved into the stone. At the bottom, a little boat was moored, with its oars. The night was dark. On the other side of the pond was waste ground, where I could land without being seen. I would go to take stock and come back.